The only painting agreed to be by the man who taught Leonardo da Vinci has emerged from one of the most intricate pieces of restoration by the National Gallery. With the agreement of scholars around the world, the National Gallery has now attributed the painting to Verrocchio, with assistance from di Credi, who specialists believe painted the infant Christ and the smaller of the angels. Scant supply of masterpieces is the only restraint on the small clique of billionaire collectors who compete for world-class trophy artworks, such as the Giacometti statue that, at £65 million, broke the world record at auction on Wednesday, or the Raphael drawing that sold for £29 million in December. In The Virgin and Child it was the confidence of the underdrawing, revealed by infra-red technology, allied to the sculptural sophistication of some of the modelling of the Virgin and the left-hand angel that helped to make the case for Verrocchio. Both The Ruskin Madonna at the National Gallery of Scotland, painted about 1470, and a more awkward painting in the National Gallery’s own collection, from 1467-69, also called The Virgin and Child with Two Angels, have now been tentatively attributed to him, making 2009-10 the artist’s most prolific season for five centuries.

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